Kansas City-based national journalist Ebony Reed and her coauthor, Louise Story, who’s also a journalist and academic, chronicled the lives of seven Black Americans of varying economic levels, ages, and professions over the last three years. Their interviews bring to life the research about the racial wealth gap in their book, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.

As part of the research, Reed and Story traced a family’s tree that involved people who had lived in Oklahoma, California, and Michigan, after they received land through a government program that benefited some Black Americans who had been enslaved by Native Americans. Reed’s search for this family led her to Beverly Rentie, who only lives 15 minutes away from Reed, in Kansas City, Missouri. Rentie is among the nearly 400 interviews conducted for this project. Reed and Rentie discuss with The Kansas City Star’s Mará Rose Williams theresearch, how they connected, and the story of Rentie’s family, which is included in the book.

Reed, a Missouri School of Journalism graduate, relocated to Kansas City in 2021. She is an author, editorial and business media leader. She’s worked for the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and The Detroit News, and has taught at more than eight institutions, including the Yale School of Management. Her late fiancé and partner was longtime Kansas City-based national sports journalist, Terez A. Paylor.